SafeAreas are invisible buildings with a certain radius. They are set to look for certain types of units (say DGs in Containment, or Armours in Yard). SafeAreas have two possible statuses: online or offline. SafeAreas are offline by default. In the PC version of Darwinia, when enough of the right type of unit enter the SafeArea, the SafeArea comes online. This can be used to trigger scripts, and is how the game registers that an objective is complete. In Darwinia PC, SafeAreas stay online; it seems that this is not the case in Darwinia+.

Moreover, this sounds like a more general change. In Darwinia, every mission objective (with the exception of "Research" objectives) is completed when a particular building comes online, whether this be a SafeArea or something else (even in Biosphere, the "kill all of the red DGs" objective is set off by a particular building coming online). In Darwinia PC, once a building comes online, it stays online forever. Thus once an objective is complete, it stays complete. It would seem that in Darwinia+, buildings that have come online can go back offline, hence objectives can be "uncompleted."

Officer research starts at 2.0. I believe it grants Goto (meaning 1.0 officers are useless), but otherwise it's the 2.0 threshold itself that does nothing. Either case is irrelevant to the standard campaign, though.